In a nutshell: in December 2007 there were 121.7 million full time jobs, while 24.8 million Americans were part-time workers for economic reasons; fast forward to November 2010 where we find that 111.1 million employees are now full time, while the rank of the part-times have increased to 27.6 million. And it is not rocket science, that converting a population to part-time workers has a disastrous impact on wealth. As Stockman presented previously, discussing part-time employment "with an average wage of $20,000 a year, that is not a breadwinning job, you can't support a family on that, you can't save on that. Those jobs will not generate income that will become self-feeding into spending." Yet more and more people are forced to work part-time, even as full time working Americans are now at their lowest since February 2010. But for some odd reason the market remains transfixed that 39k very much adjusted and completely unrealistic people may have found a job on private payrolls in November, even as full time jobs dropped by 478k.

The Wife says Home Depot is doing exactly this - most new hires are part-time and it takes an act of Congress to get full-time status. This way not only can they abuse the part-timers all they want, let them go any time they want, AND THEY DON'T HAVE TO GIVE THEM BENEFITS.